Snow Angels

“Snow Angels”

David Gordon Green, 2007

In our introduction to the unnamed town in which David Gordon Green's film “Snow Angels” is set, we witness an off-key high school band practicing on the football field. It is the middle of winter, and we can see the students' breaths as they maneuver through the freezing air. There is a certain resignation in their labored movements and in their inability to please their increasingly frustrated band leader, who is considerably older than his students. Here, Green establishes an interesting rift between a frustrated younger generation and an older one that is even more resigned to its small-town fate; it feels like members of both generations have been sapped of creative and emotional energy by the literal freeze that envelops their town.

Green, working with the cinematographer Tim Orr, carefully constructs the film's atmosphere by washing his characters in bright white light and keeping them confined within the frame, either in close up or long shot; the town somehow feels empty and claustrophobic at once. Within such a high-pressure setting, Green is intent on exploring the notion of the family ideal, and specifically with how that ideal is always sought after – if not expected – and never reached, with disastrous consequences.

At the center of Green's film is the very sad narrative concerning Annie (Kate Beckinsale) and Glenn Marchand (Sam Rockwell). Theirs is a marriage that has gone to the dogs, due to Glenn's drinking problem. During the day, Annie works at a crappy Chinese restaurant, takes care of their daughter and, at night, has sex with a co-worker's husband at a cheap motel. Glenn, who now lives with his apathetic parents, is in recovery. He has turned to God, and he's trying his best to find a job and to win back Annie's trust. But that proves to be an idealistic goal, because Annie, with good reason, refuses to let him take care of their daughter. Glenn, in his deep sorrow, his desperation, and his disillusionment with a society that is supposed to provide people a second chance, once again turns to drinking, and his behavior turns increasingly erratic. His story is a tragedy, and Rockwell's performance is a devastating portrait of all the things that can go wrong in a marriage converging upon an individual.


Green provides a counter-narrative of sorts in the relationship between a high school band member named Arthur (Michael Angarano), whose parents, while highly successful career-wise, also have a rocky marriage, and a girl who has just moved into town named Lila (Olivia Thirlby). It's a refreshing story, and both actors nail the sweet, almost bashful nature of their burgeoning attraction for one another. Within “Snow Angels,” though, it feels like an alternative reality, the ideal relationship that, in Green's mind, exists without the prospect of all-too-early marriage between two immature individuals. It is not surprising, then, that the Glenn-Annie narrative doesn't always mix well with the Arthur-Lila narrative. As Glenn heads into even more despair, resorting to desperate measures that feel weak, and scripted, precisely because of their very theatricality, Arthur and Lila have sex for the first time. It's a baffling juxtaposition, but with these two competing narratives, we have the sense that there is a reinvigoration, a thawing, with each successive generation, but that the ones who are left behind resort to self-destructive behavior. Perhaps that is their only recourse, and, perhaps, this is best for the town in general, so that those looking ahead for a better future can continue their endeavor unabated.

Rating: 8.5

First Viewed: 11/17/08, on DVD - IMDb